


Blue

by TheYsabet



Category: TAKAHASHI Rumiko - Works
Genre: Developing Relationship, F/M, Gen, Temporary Character Death, boat sinking, storm at sea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-20
Updated: 2014-04-20
Packaged: 2018-01-20 02:08:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1492792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheYsabet/pseuds/TheYsabet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Mermaid Forest fic, set in a location that I loved very much as a child (Redfish Point, NW Florida.)  Yuta and Mana die and live once more, deaths and rebirths like pearls on a string; usually they don't have time to be together and at peace, but maybe now they will.  One can hope-- immortality should have *some* benefits.</p><p>(Set to 'Carribean Blue' by Enya.  So sue me, I like the song, okay?  I wrote this ages ago as one of my very first fanfics and am transferring them over from The Pit of Voles.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blue

_Now:_

He hated drowning; it had to be one of his least favorite ways to die.

As a wave of bitter salt water slapped Yuta hard in the face, he choked and clung tighter to two things: Mana (especially Mana), and the piece of debris that was all that was keeping them afloat. It wasn't really necessary, he supposed, but instinct and habit died hard, and ressurrected as well as his own eternal self.

Yuta tucked that thought away for further consideration; he had other things to think about right now. Like maybe *not* dying this time, like continuing to hold Mana's head above water, like making sure that the knots in the rope holding them together wouldn't come apart... That last one, most of all. They had to stay together, living or dead. It was all one in the end, anyway, for them.

He gasped, choking hard on froth and cold water as a wave broke over their heads; beneath his arm Mana stirred a little, never quite regaining conciousness. When the day-cruise ship they had been working on had begun to sink, she had been hit hard by something falling-- neither of them ever saw what it was. It didn't matter. With practiced hands Yuta had tied them both to something, some kind of surfboard or skimboard stowed with the ship's leisure equipment. The _Marlin_ was a small craft, barely big enough for the crew of eight and the passengers that had booked it; and five centuries of experience had told Yuta that it wasn't going to remain afloat, not in that gale. They had already lost two men over the side; as he lashed the last knot, he'd shaken his head over the brevity of human life.

Well, most of it, anyway...

Another wave dunked them again, and he swore in obscure Japanese as they resurfaced in the wave's trough. Shit. Even if he and Mana stayed afloat, they weren't going to be able to stay above water; being immortal didn't make you stronger or anything like that. The waves kept pounding on him, the spray kept lashing his face like cold whips. Cold? This was the Gulf of Mexico- it was supposed to be *warm*, not bitter cold! Who knew that hurricanes were cold?! Of course, the unspeakably high winds might have something to do with that-

Yuta gasped as his head went below again- he hated drowning, dammit! Dammit, dammit, dammit- here he went, no choice now. And Mana... well, at least she wouldn't be awake for this. As the waves pounded them harder and harder it seemed to become less and less important to stay above water; he was losing strength, failing... dying... With the last bits of feeling in his hands long numbed away, he wedged them together between Mana and the float, circling her in his arms; her black hair washed against his face, stroking it. She was what mattered; survival wasn't. It was all one to them.

And as he slipped down into the waves, Yuta could feel it again: that strange moment when the struggle stopped, when the darkness was coming and you knew it. Dying again. In the froth and cold turmoil he tried to compose himself- he couldn't even fight anymore, he was too numb- and, as it had done so many, many times before, his oxygen-starved brain began to retrace and remember better things...

* * *

 

_Then:_

_'...And so the world goes 'round and 'round_   
_With all you ever knew;_   
_They say the sky high above_   
_Is Carribean blue.'_

The sun beat down on Yuta's head as gulls circled above, crying for scraps; the music of Enya's Shepherd Moons album filtered up from the ship's stereo system. Yuta, long since familiar with English, smiled at the lyrics and glanced up (he would always be glad of his gift for tongues; the years and the wandering were made more bearable when you could learn the language fairly easily). Yeah, it *was* blue, very blue; you got the feeling after a while that the sky was something solid, that you could slice the blueness into pieces if you had a long enough knife.

He glanced across the deck towards the main cabin; he could just see Mana through the open door, up to her elbows in dishes. Her head was bent over the sink and there was an absorbed expression on her face; manual work was still something of a novelty to her. Yuta ducked his head and grinned a little- what a strange girl she was, able to find interest in a sink full of filthy dishes! But, he thought wryly, if *he* had been raised in the kind of isolation that Mana had come from, he supposed there'd be something interesting about damn near *everything*. Even work. It was a pity that she would never be able to grow calluses on her hands- the peculiar 'condition' that they both shared did not allow for any permanent changes whatsoever, not even the normal growth of hair or fingernails; that meant that calluses were out, too.

A sharp moment of pain made him look back down at his hands; *he* was in the midst of work too, and he had just screwed up. Some of the paying customers had brought in a good-sized catch late the previous night- Yuta had heard them shouting jubilantly about their battles with sharks and swordfish and had cursed under his breath where he lay in his bunk; lots of hard work for him to do in the morning (sharks were a bitch to clean). They'd want to eat the sharks for certain, just to be able to show off their trophy sets of jaws (which Yuta would have to carefully remove) and talk about how the meat tasted. Well, that's how tourists were... And now he had stabbed himself in the wrist with the point of his gutting knife.

Well, no problem there. Long habit made him glance around, but the other deckhands were hard at work on their own fishcleaning; safe. Still... Yuta hunched a little over his wrist as the bleeding stopped and the wound closed up in a matter of seconds, leaving no trace or scar. It paid to be careful; he remembered... there had been that time when he had cut off a finger while patching a deck (back in the 1820s, wasn't it? Near Malaysia?) and had carefully stuck it back on, thinking that no-one was watching. Well, he'd been seen, hadn't he, and tossed over the side of the boat too. Bastards. He went back to his cleaning.

Really, they had been lucky to find jobs like these. Yuta wasn't exactly skilled in anything but fishing, sailing, more fishing, fish-cleaning, and more sailing; oh, he had many, many things he could do (he'd had the time to learn, after all), but nothing he could write down in a resume. And Mana wasn't skilled in *anything* at all except for being Mana. After leaving the mermaid's village where he had found her, Yuta had asked the young woman where she wanted to go. They had been sitting on a rocky slope overlooking a sea of treetops, green and dense with the fullness of Spring; Mana had looked out silently over a world that was completely new to her, utterly unknown, and had said simply "Anywhere." So that's where they went: anywhere. Everywhere. For two years they had traveled the length of Japan, walking, walking, walking; they earned a little money here and there (as even immortals have to eat), but mostly they just... went places, free as birds. Then Yuta had come across a couple of the Marlin's crewmembers in a bar, and they needed another deckhand and somebody to work as scullery...

She was still washing dishes; Yuta could just see her profile if he tilted his head a little to one side. Her hair was pulled back under a bandanna, making her look maybe a little older than the fifteen-year-old that she would forever physically be. He rather wished that she *had* been a bit older when she had been fed the mermaid's flesh that made her immortal; things would be easier then. He had been... what, about eighteen or nineteen? No more than that, surely; he couldn't remember. And anyway, he hadn't paid attention to that sort of thing then; he hadn't been able to read or write, and who had cared about counting one's years until old age caught up? He had been just a poor fisherman. But that was a long time ago... Hah! And just what was he *now*, when you thought about it? A poor fisherman, that's what. The more things changed, the more they stayed the same...

From the stereo speakers, Enya sang above the shrieking of the gulls:

_'If every man says all he can,_   
_If every man is true:_   
_Should I believe skies above_   
_Are Carribean blue?/_

Blue... They were blue, so very blue; but there were dark clouds on the horizon, and the sunrise this morning had been wildly scarlet, amber, flaming orange- the wind was freshening too. The Marlin wasn't exactly a new ship, and Yuta had his doubts about some of the integrity of the rigging, not to mention the rather antique motors. They had been listing to port a bit more than he liked, and he wondered for the first time if maybe this wasn't quite as great an opportunity as he had thought...

* * *

 

_Now:_

... cold and dark now, drifting in a vacuum of salt space with the shadows wrapped tightly around, veiling his sight. No more choking, no sensation that breath was necessary at all; Yuta was past that, still drifting and dreaming of moments past...

* * *

 

_Then:_

Well, shit; this was just *great.* A high-category hurricane, and the navigation system had died an ugly death early on. Great. Yuta worked beside the other deckhands, lashing everything in sight down; he had a coil of rope wrapped around his left hand while he worked with his right. Gods damn the weather! Some idyllic job *this* had turned out to be; if they survived, they'd be miserable until they could make landfall (wherever they were), and if they went down, he'd have to go through drowning again and he HATED drowning!

And so would Mana... There she was again, her white face at the main cabin door; she was appallingly unafraid of nearly everything, but she wanted to know where he was; her one fear was that of losing him, her anchor. Her Yuta. Well, he felt the same way (when he let himself think about it); but right now he had other things to think about, like whether or not the ship's two lifeboats were going to be needed later... Of course, if they went down in this storm it wouldn't matter; the smaller craft wouldn't hold up for a second.

A tugging at his arm made him turn; Mana was there, hanging on for dear life and shouting something, vainly trying to be heard above the roar of the storm. What-? She was pointing to one side, and he turned to see- CRASH! Something came down on him- part of the mast, a pully, who cared; it only grazed him, knocking Yuta to his knees- but Mana was down, and the waves were slopping heavily over the rails and the boat was listing too much, way too goddamned much-

It was time to go; the ship was heading for the bottom, like so many others that he had sailed upon in the past. Just another death that he would survive; the Marlin and his poor shipmates wouldn't be so lucky. But Mana would... Yuta caught her up and began to unwind the rope from his left arm, looking around for something that would float.

* * *

_Now:_

Blackness now.

... and then there was the first slow, dragging breath, and the nasty moments of coughing up what seemed like an entire sea-full of salt water. Heart thumping hard like nothing had ever slowed it; vision slowly clearing, focussing, bringing back the world. Mana-?

She was there, safe in his arms, her head resting on his chest. Yuta could feel no movement as yet, not even from her heart; Death was holding her in his arms too. Well, that wouldn't last; she would come back to him in a little while. In the meantime, where the hell were they?

Oh; a beach somewhere, with eye-blindingly white sand stretching for miles. They had washed up, just another chunk of debris among the heaps of brown-and-green seaweed, driftwood and shells; already the gulls were shrieking above them, picking the coast clean of edibles like the grey and white vultures they really were. Still clasping Mana close, Yuta pulled himself up to a sitting position on the wet sands; hmmmm, not much left of their clothing, was there? Oh well. He began to untangle the knots in the ropes that had kept them together. As they loosened, he carefully eased Mana's still form down onto the sands, lying her on her side so that the water in her lungs could (hopefully) begin to seep out of its own accord; in his experience, it made coming back a little easier.

He draped the remains of his shirt across her still form; they were both down to basically the ragged remnants of shorts (you lost clothes when you drowned; that always happened. At least he hadn't come back stark naked). Then, pushing his unruly hair from his eyes, Yuta staggered down the beach in search of whatever he could find- fresh water, food, a clue to their location; he wasn't picky. Behind him, Mana lay still and silent... until one finger twitched slightly.

When he made his way back to Mana, he found her sitting up on the shore, her arms clasped around her knees. She looked up at him, smiling; she was still learning how to smile (the mermaids that had raised her had had very few expressions), but he thought she was improving. Yuta thumped his burden down on the sand beside her: fresh water in a washed-up Gatoraid bottle (he had found a good-sized spring a little ways away, flowing down to mingle with the ocean) and some kind of sweet, dark berries from prickly bushes gathered in a battered straw hat with a flowered band that might've come from the Marlin... She drank the water gratefully, washing away the brine and the bitter taste of drowning.

They walked together towards the spring; Mana laughed as the tiny white ghost-crabs that lived along the shoreline scattered in panic from their footsteps. Yuta watched her, smiling to himself: Mana. *His* anchor, as he was hers; his safety in rough seas, his harbor... She danced a little ahead, chasing the tiny white crabs like a child; but she didn't *look* much like a child, not in the scant remains of clothing that were all they had... Hmmmm. Better to stop that train of thought right now; someday maybe Yuta would continue with it, but- not until *she* chose to. They had time, after all.

They bathed in the spring, rinsing away salt and death at the same time; it was good to be alive. Mana sat drying on the sands while Yuta began building a small fire to one side of the spring (they'd found a disposable lighter washed up on the shore that still worked, and Yuta thanked the gods for *this* little bit of litter). As the wind blew her tangle of black hair in a cloud around her face, the girl sang softly in her accented English:

_"If all we told were turned to gold,_   
_If all we dreamed was new-_   
_Imagine skies high above_   
_Of Carribean blue..."_

And Yuta smiled; he couldn't help it. _Blue._ Well... He sat back a little, looking up. The skies *were* blue, as blue as they had been before: that deep, solid-through blue, the blue of infinity, the blue of eternity. Blue that went on and on, like the sea that had produced the mermaid's flesh that had given them immortality, like the sea that had killed them.

_Blue._

He turned to Mana, still smiling. "Think we could find some fish or something? I'm starved." She scrambled to her feet happily, and they both began walking down the beach to see what they could find.

No worries, really; a ship would find them sooner or later. They had all the time in the world.

* * *

 

_NOTE:  So there you go; no big fight scenes or anything like that, but... Well; I had fun writing it. I can even tell you where they washed up; it's called Redfish Point, and I played there as a child. The spring is real too, as are the little white ghost-crabs._


End file.
